The Nobel Prize (for propaganda)

The politicization of climate science is so complete that the lead author of the IPCC's Working Group II on climate impacts feels comfortable presenting testimony to the US Congress that fundamentally misrepresents what the IPCC has concluded. I am referring to testimony given today by Christopher Field, a professor at Stanford, to the US Senate.

This is not a particularly nuanced or complex issue. What Field says the IPCC says is blantantly wrong, often 180 degrees wrong. It is one thing to disagree about scientific questions, but it is altogether different to fundamentally misrepresent an IPCC report to the US Congress. Below are five instances in which Field's testimony today completely and unambiguously misrepresented IPCC findings to the Senate.

1. On the economic costs of disasters:

Field: "As the US copes with the aftermath of last year’s record-breaking series of 14 billion-dollar climate-related disasters and this year’s massive wildfires and storms, it is critical to understand that the link between climate change and the kinds of extremes that lead to disasters is clear."

What the IPCC actually said: "There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change"​

Field's assertion that the link between climate change and disasters "is clear," which he supported with reference to US "billion dollar" economic losses, is in reality scientifically unsupported by the IPCC. Period. (More on the NOAA billion-dollar disasters below.) There is good reason for this -- it is what the science says. Why fail to report to Congress the IPCC's most fundamental finding and indicate something quite the opposite?




more...
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.ca/2012/08/ipcc-lead-author-misleads-us-congress.html

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...two things this week have changed my mind, and I have decided to take on one aspect of this issue: the infamous “hide the decline.”


...[the second was] this youtube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbR0EPWgkEI ) clip of physicist Richard Muller (Director of the Berkeley Earth Project), where he discusses “hide the decline” and vehemently refers to this as “dishonest,” and says “you are not allowed to do this,” and further states that he intends not to read further papers by these authors (note “hide the decline” appears around minute 31 into the clip). While most of his research is in physics, Muller has also published important papers on paleoclimate, including a controversial paper that supported McIntyre and McKitrick’s analysis...

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trysail said:

-Judith A. Curry, Ph.D.
Professor & Chair, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Ph.D., Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, 1982
NASA Advisory Council Earth Science Subcommittee
Fellow, American Meteorological Society
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellow, American Geophysical Union​

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trysail said:

If all else fails, go ad hominem. Nice.


Is that the newest form of post-normal scientific method?

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...This brings us to the last aspect of a PNS situation: immediate action is required. This perhaps is the most contentious aspect of PNS, in fact I would argue it is the defining characteristic. In all PNS situations it is almost always the case the one side sees the need for action, given the truth of their theory, while the doubters must of necessity see no need for immediate action. They must see no need for immediate action because their values are at risk and because the stakes are high. Another way to put this is as follows. When you are in a PNS situation, all sides must deny it. Those demanding immediate action, deny it by claiming more certainty*than is present; those refusing immediate action, do so by increasing demands for certainty...

...The demand for immediate action, however, is broader than simply a demand that society changes. In a PNS situation the behavior of those doing science changes. One of the clearest signs that you are in PNS is the change in behavior around deadlines. Normal science has no deadline. In normal science, the puzzle is solved when it is solved...

...The climategate mails are instructive here. As one reads through the mails it’s clear that the behavior of those doing science is not what one would call disinterested patient puzzle solving...

...Climategate is about FOIA. There were two critical paths for FOIA: one sought data, the other sought the emails of scientists. Not quite normal. Not normal in that data is usually shared; not normal in that we normally respect the privacy of those doing science. But this is PNS, and all bets are off. Values and practices from other fields, such as business and government, are imported into the culture of science: Data hoarding is defended using IP and confidentiality agreements. Demanding private mail is defended using values imported from performing business for the public. In short, one sign that a science is post normal, is the attempt to import values and procedures from related disciplines...

Entire piece:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/03/post-normal-science-deadlines/

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The 28gate seminar's finding that global warming science is settled and that "due balance" requires dissenting views to be seen and heard less is insidious. In this post I'm going to try to set out why.

What is the consensus? That carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas? Yup. That man's activities are increasing carbon dioxide levels? Certainly. That temperatures went up at the end of the twentieth century and have not gone up since? Definitely. That human beings can affect the climate? Without a shadow of doubt.

Anything else? I don't think so. Even simple questions like whether observed temperature rises are anything out of the ordinary remain hugely controversial. The extent to which mankind has affected and will affect temperatures is likewise unknown, a great amphitheatre of ignorance dimly illuminated by a handful of aged CFLs - the climate models that scientists have pinned their hopes on - and little else. That these models are wrong is not in doubt - all models are wrong after all - but how wrong and how useful they are as tools to guide public policy is just another mystery. How can there possibly be consensus in these circumstances?

The impacts of climate change and the economics of climate change and policy responses to climate change are likewise entirely up in the air, with new hypotheses flown every day and shot down every evening and a mishmash of often contradictary empirical observations lending colour to the chaos. A glance tells you that there is no consensus.

So let us be clear, we don't even know if we have a big problem or a small one.

Yet the seminar has decided that sceptic input is not required in any of these areas. When did you last hear it put on the BBC that climate sensitivity might be low and that we were getting worked up about nothing? When did you last hear the Stern report or decarbonisation challenged on the BBC? 2007? I certainly can't recall any recent outings for views like this: they are sceptic views and are not to be aired. Yet these are all areas in which there is precisely no academic consensus. Indeed in the case of Stern one could probably make the case that there is something approaching consensus that the noble lord is talking out of his hat.

The concepts of mainstream and sceptic, upholder and dissentient, warmist and denier are profoundly unhelpful in the climate debate. The range of questions at issue mean that it is simply preposterous to divide everyone into two camps as the BBC has done - it's simply not logical.

Of course, given that the seminar was run for the benefit of green pressure groups, it's clear that logic had nothing to do with it. The BBC has used the seminar to minimise criticism of any aspect of climate science, climate economics and climate policy.




http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/11/22/the-bbc-and-the-consensus-1.html

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http://www.masterresource.org/2012/11/cleanpower-sf/


San Francisco’s ‘Green’ Energy Plan: Back-Door Coercion, Front-Door Costs
by Dave Roberts
November 26, 2012

“I don’t think it’s the right thing to do to foist onto consumers … 20 to 30 percent higher energy rates in an opt-out program. If people want to spend more money … to buy green energy … that is terrific…. But to coerce them into doing it in an opt-out program … is the wrong approach.”

- Mark Farrell, San Francisco Supervisor, 2012 (quoted below)

Thousands of San Francisco residents may be sucked into a green energy plan that will raise their electricity rates 77 percent without their knowledge or consent. Beginning next spring, half of the city’s 375,000 residential ratepayers will automatically be enrolled in CleanPowerSF – unless they take action to opt out of the program. Eventually the entire city will be enrolled in the program unless they choose to opt out.

Here is the sales pitch of CleanPowerSF:


Currently, you don’t have a choice in how PG&E selects your power. Your PG&E electricity is generated from a portfolio that includes carbon-emitting and nuclear energy sources like natural gas and nuclear power. CleanPowerSF will generate your electricity from a 100% renewable electricity portfolio. CleanPowerSF’s energy mixture will utilize resources like solar, wind, biogas and geothermal power, effectively the cleanest energy available in the United States.

City officials are hoping at least 90,000 households will choose to remain in the program — despite paying an average $18 more each month. That could be a safe bet, because many liberal, wealthy San Franciscans will embrace the opportunity to boast that their power is coming from a clean, green, renewable energy source.

Many residents, perhaps tens of thousands, who could not care less where their energy comes from may be stuck with a 23 percent total rate hike (the 77 percent commodity-charge increase averaged down by unchanged items such as transmission). They would be unaware of the change and not know about their option to get out of it–thanks to CleanPowerSF’s “Do nothing, and you will receive cleaner energy; it’s that simple” siren song.

Pro-Consumer Advocates
That possibility bothers three San Francisco supervisors, who offered an amendment to the plan in September to help ensure it only includes willing participants. Their amendment, however, was voted down 8-3.

“It smells of coercion,” said Supervisor Mark Farrell of the opt-out provision.

He acknowledged that the state law enabling the formation of a Community Choice Aggregation program requires that it can only be an opt-out situation instead of a voluntary opt in. State legislators were concerned that if such a program were voluntary it would not get enough participants to make it viable. If San Francisco’s program does not attract at least 90,000 participants, the city would be liable for the funding shortfall along with Shell Energy, which could be as much as $15 million.

But Farrell believes the city could work around that constraint.


To me this [should be] a volunteer program or we create a mechanism where we knew the people who are being offered CCA and are being asked to increase their energy rates had at least indicated they wanted to do so….


I don’t think it’s the right thing to do to foist onto consumers an increase of 20 to 30 percent higher energy rates in an opt-out program. If people want to spend more money … to buy green energy from CleanPowerSF, I think that is terrific and we should allow people the ability to do that. But to coerce them into doing it in an opt-out program … is the wrong approach.

Farrell was backed by Supervisor Carmen Chu, who offered an amendment requiring that the initial rollout would only encompass “those customers who have indicated a desire to be included in the initial marketing of the program.” Chu also offered an amendment that would cancel the program if not enough people expressed interest to make it financially viable.

Farrell, Chu and Sean Elsbernd, the three moderates on the mostly leftist Board of Supervisors, voted for the amendments. Scott Wiener was the only other supervisor to express any interest in making sure that unaware San Franciscans aren’t sucked into the rate hike.

“I think there are very good arguments on both sides of this,” said Wiener, who wanted more information on the impact of Chu’s amendments. “I don’t want to have something passed and signed into law that will cause (San Francisco Public Utility Commission officials) to spin around chasing their tails because ultimately the program doesn’t happen because we have inserted a poison pill. We know state law requires an opt out. They are suggesting a preliminary opt in that shows support before proceeding. My question is whether we are able to do that, to have some form of an opt in that precedes the opt out.”

Green Planners at Work
PUC General Manager Ed Harrington, who postponed his retirement in order to shepherd CleanPowerSF to completion, responded that plans are already in place to achieve what Chu’s amendments are seeking to do, and that her amendments could in fact gum up the works.

“We’ve done extensive surveying already in terms of polling,” said Harrington.


We are only going and looking at places where a majority of people want to do it in the first place. We are not just randomly capturing people in the city where a majority may not want us. The problem that I see is that to be able to go out and have people sign up, I should be able to tell them the price. If I don’t know how many people are going to sign up or when they’re going to sign up, I can’t lock in the price until I sign the contract with Shell. It really harms the ability to have an intelligent conversation with people when you’re saying, ‘I don’t know what it is, but do you want it?’ It’s much more straightforward to say, ‘This is what it is, here’s your chance to make a choice.’

Wiener made a motion to postpone the decision a week to allow time to figure out a way to make sure that only willing participants are signed up for the program. The motion was voted down 7-3. Wiener then joined the majority in voting down Chu’s amendments.

Supervisor David Campos spearheaded the effort to approve the program, noting that the plan dates back 14 years when current state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, was a supervisor.

“It’s not as ambitious and aggressive a program as many people wanted,” said Campos. “But it’s a program that at the end assures success and viability. At the end of the day it’s really about providing consumers a choice. It’s about making sure that ratepayers in San Francisco have the opportunity to not only have clean energy but to have a meaningful choice, to make sure there are other players in the business of providing energy beyond the utility [PG&E] that has had a monopoly for so long.”

Harrington pointed out that San Francisco has a goal of reducing carbon emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. The city is currently in the process of spending $90 million for solar projects that will provide greenhouse gas reduction equivalent to fewer than 7,000 homes. CleanPowerSF will expand that to 90,000 homes for just $19.5 million, most of which won’t be spent unless the program falls short of the 90,000 signups.

“There’s nothing else anyone has even thought of that has that kind of dramatic impact in San Francisco of such a small dollar amount,” said Harrington. “It’s an incredibly efficient way of spending your money.”

But the clean energy program may not be as clean and wonderful as it’s been touted, according to an SF Weekly. A city controller’s report pointed out that city agencies will be spending millions of dollars more for energy under CleanPowerSF, and that will likely result in reduced city services and jobs.

In addition, the program doesn’t guarantee that 100 percent of the city’s energy will be coming directly through a pipeline from a wind farm or solar array. The Shell contract allows the company to obtain energy from some of the same sources as PG&E (which is doing so at much less cost), including coal and gas. Energy could also come from burning methane from landfills, sewage treatment plants and feedlots — renewable, but not exactly clean.

Veto Option Remains
CleanPowerSF is not yet a done deal. Mayor Ed Lee shares Farrell and Chu’s concern about the opt-out provision, and he may veto the legislation. Still, the board appears to have the eight votes necessary to over-ride a veto. But will those eight votes hold after the public becomes aware that they may be facing a 23 percent rate hike next year?

—————-

Dave Roberts, a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay Area, has written editorials for the San Francisco Examiner and currently contributes to CalWatchdog.com.

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The purported 0.7°C of average global warming over the past century is highly uncertain. It is in fact less than the margin of error in our ability to determine the average temperature anywhere, much less globally. What portion of any such warming might be due to due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions is even less certain. There are, however, numerous phenomena which are affected by temperature and which can provide good evidence of relative warming or cooling and, in some cases, even actual temperatures. These include growth rings in trees, corals and stalactites, borehole temperature profiles and the isotopic and biologic signatures in core samples from sediments or glaciers. In addition, historical accounts of crops grown, harvest times, freezes, sea ice, river levels, glacial advances or retreats and other such records provide clear indication of warming and cooling.

Recent Warming Nothing Unusual
The temperature record everywhere shows evidence of warming and cooling in accord with cycles on many different time scales from daily to annual, decadal, centennial, millennial and even longer. Many of these seem to correlate with various cycles of solar activity and the Earth’s own orbital mechanics. The temperature record is also marked by seemingly random events which appear to follow no discernable pattern.

Over the past 3000 years there is evidence from hundreds of independent proxy studies, as well as historical records, for a Minoan Warm period around 1000 BC, a Roman Warm Period about 2000 years ago, a Medieval Warm Period (WMP) about 1000 years ago and a Modern Warm Period now developing. In between were markedly colder periods in the Dark Ages and another between the 16th and 19th centuries which is now known as the Little Ice Age (LIA). The warmer periods were times of bountiful crops, increasing population and a general flourishing of human societies. The cold periods were times of droughts, famines, epidemics, wars and population declines. Clearly life has been much better in the times of warmer climate, and there is nothing to indicate that the apparent mild warming of the past century is anything other than a return of this millennial scale warming cycle.

Good News Unwelcome to Alarmists
This rather good news about a possibly warmer climate has not met with hopeful interest from those who purport to be so concerned about the possibly dangerous effects of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). On the contrary, their reaction has overwhelmingly been a strong rejection of any beneficial possibility. It is apparent that their deepest commitment is to the threat itself and not to any rational assessment of real world probabilities or the broader consequences of any of their proposed remedies.

Fabricating a Hockey Stick from Hot Air
This blanket rejection of any possibility other than the hypothetical threat of AGW has led to some strange behaviour for people who modestly proclaim themselves to be the world’s top climate scientists. Not only have they ignored and dismissed the hundreds of studies indicating the global existence of a Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, they have set out to fabricate an alternate reality in the form of a graph purporting to represent the global temperature for the past thousand years. It portrays a near straight line wiggling up and down only a fraction of a degree for centuries until it begins an exponential rise gradually starting at the beginning of the 20th century and then shooting steeply up in the latter part of that century. This hockey stick-shaped graph was then heavily promoted as the icon of AGW. It appeared on the cover of the third climate assessment report of the IPCC published in 2003 and was reproduced at various places in the report itself.

Among the emails between leading climate researchers released in the Climategate affair were a number which revealed a concerted effort to come up with some means to deny the existence of the MWP. The implement chosen to do this became known as the Hockey Stick Graph.

The methodology used to construct the graph involved the use of estimates of temperatures from a very small sample of tree growth rings from the Yamal Peninsula in far northern Siberia and ancient stunted pine trees from near the tree line in the High Sierras of California. This data was then subjected to a statistical treatment later shown by critics to produce a hockey stick form of graph even when random numbers were used as raw input data. To make matters even worse, the same tree ring data also indicated a significant decline in temperature for the 20th century, but this was hidden by burying it in a much larger number of data points from instrument measurements. The resulting study was published in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature in 1998. Remarkably, this very small, highly selected and deceptively manipulated graph was proclaimed to be an accurate representation of global temperatures and the extensive body of contrary evidence was simply ignored.

Continuing the Game With a Busted Stick
When serious shortcomings of the hockey stick study began to be exposed and questioned the climate alarmists closed ranks and proclaimed their preeminent authority and expertise but refused to engage in any genuine scientific debate with their critics. Instead, they appealed to a supposed consensus of experts, peer review, and personal denigration of any who dared to disagree.

All of the name calling, pissing contests over credentials and abstruse statistical manipulations made it difficult for the general public to come to any conclusion. Regardless of various provable errors and conflicting evidence, the alarmists could and did simply ignore it all and claim the HS graph as gospel truth.

Then came Climategate. Obvious scams, lies and connivance are something that doesn’t require a computer model or a PhD to recognise. In the Climategate emails discussion of things like things like “…Mike’s Nature trick…,”, manipulations to “…hide the decline”, requests to destroy correspondence, efforts to supress publication of conflicting studies, vilification of critics, and abuse of peer review were matters anyone could see were not ethical. Certainly they were not the kind of behaviour we should expect from high level scientists whose advice we are being asked to accept in policies that could be expected to have major effects on the prosperity of our entire society.

The loss of public trust and credibility resulting from Climategate was immense and has been compounded by additional ongoing exposures of misconduct, repeated failures of alarmist predictions and the slow motion economic train wreck of green energy initiatives.

Although one might rationally expect that the obvious collapse of alarmist momentum would have them reassessing their approach and perhaps even the validity of their earlier assumptions, it seems that the idea that they may have been wrong in any respect must be be inconceivable to them. Instead, their response to conflicting reality and declining credibility has been only to declare still greater certainty and ratchet up the alarm to an even less believable level of hype.

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Repeat the Failure
Introduction of the carbon tax in Australia was supposed to lead the world along the path of righteousness toward cheap renewable energy and environmental correctness. Unfortunately for the current government both economic reality and climate itself have not co-operated. The intended good example is becoming one of an obvious foolishness to be avoided and nobody is following. Ongoing exposure of scientific misconduct by alarmist researchers and repeated failure of their predictions haven’t helped either. The alarmist community is in disarray and becoming increasingly shrill in the tone of their pronouncements. The need for strong new scientific evidence to reinforce the shredded remnants of their discredited claims is becoming desperate.

CSIRO has tried to help with a series of increasingly dire predictions but having become a heavily bureaucratised and politicised institution they have been careful to cover their backsides with qualifiers and disclaimers which dull the sharp edge of hype, certainty and urgency needed by government. However, through generous grants government has also bought and paid for reliable cadres of university based academics whose funding and even whole careers are now based on research into Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW). Although science may aspire to value free objectivity, it is observable fact that when generous funding is provided to study a purported problem, one thing is certain. It will never be found that there really wasn’t one.

In early June this year a new research report announced the finding of a distinct hockey stick shaped graph for Australian climate over the past millennium. If correct, this would be of great value in supporting the faltering case for CAGW. As the original HS graph was based entirely on data from the northern hemisphere, finding the same pattern from the Southern Hemisphere would bolster the claim that the recent warming is indeed global and unprecedented. Based on different much more extensive data and free of the inappropriate statistical treatment of the original HS study, this new one would also greatly bolster the tattered credibility of the original study.

The new study appeared in Journal of Climate under the title, "Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium". It was authored by Joelle Gergis, Raphael Neukom, Ailie Gallant, Steven Phipps and David Karoly. In mid-May 2012 it was made available online in preprint form, having been peer reviewed and accepted for print publication in an upcoming issue of the journal. In a number of key aspects what followed has been a rerun of the original HS story. Shortly after the online preprint appeared, the Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre pointed out that a statistical procedure which was stated in the Gergis et al. study to have been applied had not in fact been used.

Not coincidentally, it was McIntyre who exposed the statistical shortcomings in the original HS study.

Although advanced statistical analysis is widely used in science, very few researchers have a thorough mathematical understanding of what they are doing in this regard. Most are simply following a recipe. However, there is little risk of having to justify the validity of anything as their peers are not statisticians either. McIntyre has an unfair advantage in this. He is a genuine expert in statistics critiquing the work of researchers who are really not very skilled in his discipline.

What ensued in subsequent critical discussion on the Internet and in emails between the authors, their colleagues and the journal editors was a litany of shifting denial, obfuscation, excuses, trivialisation and denigration that could have been borrowed from the original HS script. Without going into the tedious and tawdry details (readily available on the net), the key points of the story are that in response to McIntyre’s finding of the statistical problem the authors announced they had already discovered it themselves the day before McIntyre pointed it out, and that it was really just an oversight in the data processing routine which could quickly be corrected and would have no effect on the overall findings of the study. The journal editors accepted this and gave the authors a deadline with sufficient time to rerun the data routine and make any necessary corrections to the MS.

After much speculation in the blogosphere and varying opinion among the authors and their supporters about what to do and how it might affect the outcome, the deadline passed without a corrected MS being received by the journal. The editors then asked for the study to be withdrawn. Such a request is the scientific equivalent of hara-kiri, a dishonour so great that the only honourable atonement is what amounts to ritual scientific suicide.

If, as publically maintained, all that was involved was a data processing error which could easily be corrected and would have no important effect on the outcome, surely the correction would have been made. However, email correspondence between the authors (which became available through an FOI request) revealed a concern that if properly applied the omitted data processing routine would not result in the desired HS graph or, if it did so, would at best yield only highly uncertain results.

The direct cost of this fiasco to taxpayers is reported to have totalled some $950,000 in research grants from 2009 to 2012. To further this failed work the latest Australian Research Council grants announcement also lists another $350,000 in funding to the lead author approved for 2013 – 2015. The climate gravy train can provide a sumptuous ride for those whose work shows promise of producing what the government wants.

Climatology - Science or Ideology?
Climatology is no longer recognisable as a science but has morphed into a fundamentalist ideology of a millenarian nature. Science only serves it to enhance claims of authority and certainty. Scientific ethics and evidence are employed selectively in accord with the noble cause of saving the planet from the corruptions of humanity and capitalism. Any conflicting reason or evidence is never sufficient for doubt but is only a test of faith to be overcome. Any opposing argument is not simply incorrect but driven by wilful evil, in league with big business if not Satan himself.

For third rate academics CAGW has much to offer. One doesn’t need to be particularly capable to speculate about some dire consequence of warming, receive widespread publicity and be treated as an important expert. Unlike in real science, no colleagues will dispute them and the few sceptics willing to question anything will generally be ignored and denigrated by all their peers. The news media will describe them as experts and provide the public attention they know they deserve but somehow had never been recognised by anyone else until they climbed onto the climate bandwagon. Grants then flow and jetting off to attend important conferences in attractive places with all expenses paid provides frequent welcome breaks from the tedium of academia. Perhaps best of all, is a delicious feeling of importance and moral superiority over all of the high achievers striving so hard to discover something of consequence about the real world. The only personal cost is to one’s own scientific integrity and that’s not worth much if one is just another unrecognised minor league academic no one had ever heard of before they joined into the climate alarm. In any case, saving the planet is the noblest of all causes and absolves any tinge of guilt in such regard.

Uncertainty and a Duty of Care
Recently an Italian court sentenced several scientists to jail terms in connection with a failed prediction regarding an earthquake. The court decision provoked widespread condemnation from the global scientific community because earthquakes are beyond the ability of current science to predict. However, the legal basis of their culpability was not in failing to predict the quake but in falsely asserting certainty in their own prediction. In this instance the scientists assured the local population that there was little risk of a dangerous event and that they should all go home, have a nice bottle of wine and not worry. A strong quake took place and several hundred people were killed.

The situation was perhaps exacerbated by a conflicting opinion from an independent researcher who had detected a sharp rise in radon gas in the air and felt this was evidence of an impending temblor. The government experts disagreed and assured everyone they were the experts and they were confident there was little or no risk.

If scientists are going to claim high levels of expert authority they have a duty of care to make clear the level of uncertainty in their predictions. This is especially so where there are potentially major detrimental consequences from following their advice should it prove to be incorrect. The essential difference between belief and science, or between alarmists and sceptics, is that the former assert certainty while the latter admit room for doubt. False claims of certainty and expertise by alarmist researchers have been a major obstacle to any rational public debate of the matter.

Fantasies vs. Reality
In the meantime, while we have been indulging the fantasies of activists and academics vying for our attention on the threat of CAGW, the economies of the developed world have come to teeter on the brink of financial chaos.

Democracies everywhere have voted for more government and more benefits than their productive sectors can support. Deficits are now chronic and blowing out while productive activity struggles under the burden of ever more government imposed restrictions and demands. The climate-alarmist push to penalise and restrict the use of fossil fuels and force the premature adoption of expensive, inadequate, unreliable renewable energy is a dagger to the very heart of our society at a time of great vulnerability. Ironically, if the alarmist aim is achieved they themselves, the urban non-producers, will be among the first to become truly unsustainable. The next few years look to become a decisive reality test.

In news just in (and curiously ignored in the mainstream Western media) it is reported that for the first time since it began The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was not invited to attend an upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference. Could it be that in a global financial crisis nations have finally come to realise that climate hysterics are more of a problem than a solution?



http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/11/speak-loudly-and-carry-a-busted-hockey-stick

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